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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829643">is the devil so bad if he cries in his sleep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Homestuck</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Internal Monologue, Post-Canon, Self-Reflection, i wrote this at 5am dude its literally just ult dirk crying in the dark dont @ me</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:15:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>843</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829643</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk knows that he is what he must be, but it still hurts, sometimes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>is the devil so bad if he cries in his sleep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Does Rose miss who she was before? He knows Terezi sits for hours, watching her body breath. He tells himself that it's sad, really, that she feels this attachment to a form that failed it's owner, but he cannot help to wonder if Rose is really as resigned to this as he is.</p>
<p>What he actually wonders is if she misses it as much as he does. She must; she had a much happier life than he did. Her guardian may have been neglectful, but she was alive. She may have lived in isolation, but the rest of the world was above sea-level. Her friends may have been separated by hundreds of miles, but they weren't separated by hundreds of years. She had it better.</p>
<p>She had a wife who loved her.</p>
<p>He tries not to think about his part in that being in the past tense.</p>
<p>This is what makes him think she may not miss it as much as he does: he knows exactly what he is doing and what is happening. She knows they have become the bad guys, and she knows why it needed to happen. He was the one who took the people he had once considered friends by their marionette strings and shook them until they danced the jig he wanted. He did the dirty work, and now he feels the grime under his nails and under his skin.</p>
<p>Does Rose still believe that Kanaya was willing to let her go? Does she yet understand that whenever he comes into frame <em>will</em> becomes irrelevant because he is the one who narrates the thoughts of everyone else and can change them to suit his needs?</p>
<p>Everyone bearing an exception (the dead Calliope who has sew herself into dog-girl form) and a half (Terezi, who Sees more by the day in spite of her lack of ascension). </p>
<p>And Kanaya had put up such a fight. She loved Rose. She loved Rose, and even if he hadn't let her see what was happening she had loved her enough to still feel that it was wrong. </p>
<p>Because it was wrong. All of it was wrong. He regrets so much, and he knows that if he dwells on it he will not be able to be himself anymore. That is why he only allows himself these thoughts during the darkest hours of the night, much as the author of this is only allowing themselves to write homestuck fanfiction because it is almost five am and they cannot sleep. The nights were mainly made for saying things that you can't say tomorrow day, he thinks he remembers hearing in a song once, and fuck if he can't relate. Tomorrow day he will be Ultimate Dirk, young god and last great villain of canon, again, but for now he is only himself and goddammit he is going to enjoy it while it lasts.</p>
<p>Enjoy, of course, is entirely the wrong word for what he is feeling, but any feeling at all is a good one at this point. </p>
<p>He almost can't remember most enjoyable feelings, and he has a sinking suspicion that they were something he lost when he lost Jake. Even now he has to wonder if the Jake he kissed goodbye was really Jake at all, or merely the broken melding of the Jake-who-was and the Jake-he-thought-was.</p>
<p>But he needs to stop at that. He is not being honest. There was nothing accidental about what happened to Jake. He knew exactly what he was doing when he went muddling about in other people's minds with a power that could cut the fabric of reality like a hot knife through butter.</p>
<p>Well. He knew what he was doing. He didn't know that the effects could be quite so <em>severe</em>.</p>
<p>And now he is cutting himself undue slack again, so he thinks about how he had teased Dave and Karkat into their obviously overdue trajectory. There, too, he had done too much. Dave could tell his thoughts were not his own. At least that had ended well regardless.</p>
<p>He considers what he knows of a different Dave and Karkat, who shared shelter from rain outside of their Dirk's funeral, and who's story had not gone as well.</p>
<p>God. Damn. That other Dirk died to ensure his, Dirk's, power. That other Dirk hung himself from the belltower for his, Dirk's, sake. It makes him sick to think about, and it makes him ache to remember. More feelings he needs to live in while he can, and more guilt to fester inside of who he has become.</p>
<p>Maybe if he feels enough now it can balance out the rest of it, all the time he doesn’t. Maybe the place where he is holding all of this will ache enough tomorrow to let him feel it again, while it counts.</p>
<p>He isn’t crying. He has never cried in his memory. He doesn’t know how to cry. At times like this, though, he wishes he would, just so he could know that he was really feeling at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>title is from "devil like me" by rainbow kitten surprise (gud song by a gud band)</p>
<p>when i say i wrote this at 5am understand that i didnt sleep AT ALL and basically didnt edit so like........ thats Why It Is Like This :/ i changed what i could see was blatantly incorrect (there was quite a bit) but i doubt i caught it all</p>
<p>i was going to say that this was my first hs fic but then i remembered i wrote some johnkat in middle school which is........................... not much of a step up</p>
<p>hot take but dirk is very interesting as a villain and i still like him Also the epilogues and hs2 are fun and cool</p></blockquote></div></div>
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